1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates to a method of determining hydrogen deficiency and a device for determining hydrogen deficiency.
2. Description of Related Art
At present, a fuel cell which receives supply of reactant gas (fuel gas and oxidant gas) to perform electric power generation has put into practical use. The fuel cell is an electric power generation system which oxidizes fuel through an electrochemical process to directly convert energy discharged with the oxidation reaction to electric energy. The fuel cell has a membrane-electrode assembly in which a polymer electrolyte membrane for selectively transporting hydrogen ions is sandwiched by a pair of electrodes (anode electrode and cathode electrode) made of porous materials on both side surfaces, and each electrode has a catalyst layer which promotes an electrochemical reaction.
In such a fuel cell, if hydrogen is deficient in the anode electrode during electric power generation, the catalyst is deteriorated. For this reason, means (method) for determining the presence or absence of hydrogen deficiency in the fuel cell is required. In recent years, a hydrogen concentration estimation method which estimates a hydrogen concentration to be relatively low when a measured impedance semicircle is relatively large using the correlation relationship between the impedance semicircle of the fuel cell and the hydrogen concentration in the fuel cell was proposed (for example, see International Publication No. 2010/128555 (WO 2010/128555 A)).